صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

proper emphasis and agreeable turn she gave to each character, that he swore the girl was cut out for the stage. Captain (afterwards Sir John) Vanbrugh, a friend of the family, recommended her to Rich, and shortly after she made her debut at Covent Garden, with an allowance of fifteen shillings a week.

Though a dozen other famous Mitre Taverns might be mentioned, these are sufficient to show how general a sign it was; the partiality of tavern-keepers for it is somewhat accounted for in the following stanza of the "Quack Vintners," 1712 :—

66

May Smith, whose prosperous mitre is his sign,
To shew the church no enemy to wine;

Still draw such Christian liquor none may think,
Tho' e'er so pious, 'tis a sin to drink." *

The Mitre also is found in a few combinations, as the MITRE AND DOVE, i. e., the Holy Ghost, in King Street, Westminster; the MITRE AND KEYS, in Leicester-evidently the Cross Keys, which are a charge in the arms of several bishoprics; and the MITRE AND ROSE, which, from trades tokens, appears to have been the sign of a tavern in the Strand, as well as in Wood Street, Cheapside.

That the friars were also honoured on the signboard appears from " Fryar Lane, on the south side of Thames Street, near Dowgate. It was formerly called Greenwich Lane, but of later years Fryar's Lane, from the sign of a Fryar sometime there." + Probably it was a BLACK FRIAR, or Dominican Monk, for that order, above all others, had the reputation of being great topers, and therefore were not out of place on a signboard. There is a prayer extant of the holy fathers, addressed to St Dominic :"Sanctus Dominicus sit nobis semper amicus

Qui canimus nostro jugiter præconia rostro,
De cordis venis, siccatis ante lagenis;
Ergo tuas laudes si tu nos pangere gaudes,
Tempore paschali, fac ne potu puteali
Conveniat uti; quod si fit, undique muti

Semper erunt patres qui, non curant nisi fratres." +

* "The Quack Vintners, or a Satyr against Bad Wine," 1713; probably a pamphlet got up by the London vintners against Brook and Hilliers, the famous wine merchants re commended by the Spectator.

Hatton's New View of London, 1708, p. 32.

"Saint Dominic be always our friend,

Who sing thy praises daily in our pulpit,

From the veins of our hearts, after we have emptied our flagons;

Therefore if thou rejoicest to hear us set forth thy praise,

Make that in Easter time we of spring water

Need not drink, for if that were to happen, everywhere

They will be mute monks, who do not run about unless they be friars.”

And an old French couplet gives the following gradations of the potatory capacities of the different orders, in which the Franciscans only are said to beat the Dominicans :-

"Boire à la Capucine,

C'est boire pauvrement;
Boire à la Célestine,
C'est boire largement;
Boire à la Jacobine,
C'est chopine à chopine;
Mais boire en Cordelier,

C'est vider le cellier."

His

Tokens are extant of a music-house, with the sign of the Black-friar, dated 1671. In Paris also, the Bacchic propensities of the Black-friars made a tavern-keeper of the seventeenth century choose Sr DOMINIC as the patron saint of his tavern. principal customers, who formed a sort of club, were called Dominicans; a contemporary song thus gives the rule of this order :

[ocr errors]

"Nous sommes dix, tous grands buveurs;

Bons ivrognes et grands fumeurs,

Qui ne cessant jamais de boire,

Et de remuer la machoire,

Méprisons d'amour les faveurs." +

Nuns also figured on the signboard as the THREE NUNS, which was constantly used by drapers; not exactly, as Tom Brown says, very dismally painted to keep up young women's antipathy to popery and" single blessedness, but because the holy sisterhoods were generally very expert in making lace embroidery, and other fancy work-as the handkerchiefs made by the nuns of Pau, and sold by our drapers, fully prove even at the present day. In the seventeenth century, the Three Nuns was the sign of a well-known coaching and carriers' inn in Aldgate, which gave its name to Three Nuns' Court close at hand; near this inn was the "dreadful gulf, for such it was rather than a pit," in which, during the

"To drink like a Capuchin,

Is to drink poorly;

To drink like a Benedictine,

Is to drink deeply;

To drink like a Dominican,

Is pot after pot;

But to drink like a Franciscan,

Is to drink the cellar dry."

"We are ten, all deep drinkers,
Jolly topers, and good smokers,
Who, never giving over drinking
And eating,

Scorn the favours of love."

[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Plague of 1665, not less than 1114 bodies were buried in a fortnight, from the 6th to the 20th of September.* Not improbably this sign, after the Reformation, was occasionally metamorphosed into the THREE WIDOWS: Peter Treveris, a foreigner, erected a press and continued printing until 1552 at the THREE WIDOWS in Southwark; he printed several books for William Rastell, John Reynor, R. Copeland, and others in the city of London. It is still the sign of a cap and bonnet shop in Dublin. The MATRONS, also, may have originally represented Nuns; this last hung, in the seventeenth century, at the door of John Bannister, crutch and bandage maker, near the hospital, (Christ's Hospital School,) Newgate Street. +

At the present day the CHURCH is a very common ale-house sign, either on account of the esteem in which good living has been held by churchmen in all ages, "superbis pontificum potiore cœnis," or, from the proximity of a church to the ale-house in question; thus, one inn in the town would be known as the "Market House," whilst another might be known as the "Church Inn." It has been said the name was given that topers might equivocate and say that they "frequently go to church." Be this as it may, there is generally an ale-house close to every church, (in Knightsbridge the chapel of the Holy Trinity is jammed in between two public-houses,) whereby a good opportunity is offered to wash a dry sermon down. In Bristol, at the beginning of the present century, it was still worse—a Methodist meeting-room was immediately over a public-house, which gave rise to the following epigram :

"There's a spirit above and a spirit below,

A spirit of joy and a spirit of woe-
The spirit above is the spirit divine;

But the spirit below is the spirit of wine."

Other signs connected with the church are the CHAPEL BELL, at Suton, in Norfolk, and the CHURCH STILE or CHURCH GATES, which is very common. The origin of this last comes from an old custom of drinking ale on the parish account, on certain occasions, at the church stile. Pepys mentions this when he was at Walthamstow, April 14, 1661 :-" After dinner we all went to the church stile, and there eat and drank." To this a correspondent in the Gent. Mag. (Nov. 1852, p. 442) makes the following note:-"In an old book of accounts belonging to Warrington

The Plague, by De Foe.

† Beaufoy Trades Tokens.

« السابقةمتابعة »